Day: August 26, 2009

You know, you don’t REALLY appreciate how messed up our health care system is until you have to deal with it.

And though it’s messed up, and we have to jump through hoops in order to get things done, it’s STILL better than if we turned it over to the government to completely muck up. It’s flawed, but at least it works — sort of.

Actually, I need to be fair to the clinic. We got his results back after about a week.

His scores were off the chart.

Which, I knew they would be.

Only, his results weren’t all that typical. Yes, he has sleep apnea, but it only kicks in when he reaches REM sleep. He’s fine until he reaches that stage and then he simply stops breathing, wakes himself up, can’t make himself go right back to sleep and *BEEP BEEP BEEP* his alarm is going off and it’s time to start the day.

The sleep clinic people were supposed to wake him up and put him on a cpap machine whenever his apnea kicked in, but they never did. And we’re thinking they never had time, because by the time his apnea kicked in, he was in REM and he woke himself up too fast for them to jump in and help him.

Okay, so now what? His doctor prescribed a cpap machine to see if that would help him sleep through the night. So, we put in a request for a machine through the medical supply store and we waited to hear back from them.

And we waited.

And we waited.

Finally, Kevin had to start round one of about 100 to get the ball rolling on obtaining a cpap machine.

After playing musical phone calls, (ya’ll know what I’m talking about – the frustrating stage where they tell you they can’t help you, direct you to another person who also can’t help you and then it’s ultimately back to the doctor because did he actually PRESCRIBE the machine? And yes he did and then we’re being transferred back to the original person who now has a question on whether our insurance will cover it or not. So Kevin has to call and confirm with the insurance company TWICE that yes indeed-y they will cover it and can we have our damn machine now?), we finally get an appointment for him to come in and learn how to use the machine.

GRR. See? Utter chaos. Our health care system is messed up. It really DOES need a complete overhaul, (relax restrictions, allow interstate policies, encourage competition so we can get these insane prices down, etc.) without the government sticking it’s greedy, incompetent hands in the middle of it, thank you very much.

Sorry. Sore subject with me.

Anyway, Kevin gets an appointment and he shows up to learn how to use the machine they are going to assign him. He said there were about two or three other guys there getting their own machines, but he was the only one who had a different machine.

Naturally.

Since his apnea only kicks in when he’s in REM sleep, they needed a machine that would sense that and … do whatever it is that it needs to do to help him regulate his breathing.

He came home and tried it.

Again, he was such a good sport – he allowed me to take his picture when he got all hooked up.

(Love you sweetie!)

It looks terribly uncomfortable, but he insists that it’s actually not too bad.

In essence, it’s a mask-like contraption that goes into each nostril and pumps moisturized air (from distilled water) into his lungs. The machine is supposed to sense, and adjust, to his breathing whenever he goes into apnea.

The first night he tried it, it fell off and he woke up at 3:00, as usual. The next night, it stayed on, but he still woke up at 3:00 (WTH?), but he said he went right back to sleep (as opposed to just lying there for an hour or so). So, he’s thinking he woke up from habit and not from his apnea.

He says it’s really weird, there is so much air being pumped into his lungs that it’s hard for him to exhale, so we’re thinking the setting is too high (we can’t adjust the setting, it has to be done by the medical supply people).

In fact, he can open his mouth and feel the air coming out. Instead of snoring, he now makes this little baby-like raspberry sound. (It’s actually pretty funny!)

He hasn’t been too impressed with it at this point, but it’s still early and he’s still getting used to it, so we’ll see. He did try to loosen it a bit the other night and he said that seemed to help him to not feel quite so overwhelmed, but overall, it doesn’t seem to be helping him that much.

He’s still waking up. But he’s waking up with clear sinus passages and he says he can actually smell things again.

In fact, the thing that seems to help him the most is taking Tylenol PM. And I’m assuming that’s because it has pseudoephedrine in it and forces his sinuses to open up so he can breathe.

I don’t know. The machine is supposed to be keeping track of his progress, so when he goes back in a few weeks, they can either adjust the settings or suggest something else.

It’s disappointing, to say the least. We really had high hopes that this machine would be the answer to his sleep problems. And though it’s certainly helped and it’s nice to know, for sure, what the problem is, it’s still maddening that he’s still not getting a decent night’s sleep.

Poor guy. He’s so tired (pun intended) of being a walking zombie all the time.

About Me

Hello! My name is Karen and welcome! I’m a mom to two young men – Blake (27) and Brandon (25). I’ve been married to the same wonderful, patient, thoughtful and generous man (Kevin) for 29 years.

I work full time in a healthcare clinic – it’s my “day” job. I squeeze in family time and blogging in between all of that. (Okay, I really spend the majority of my “down” time watching YouTube videos or trying to figure out how to play new board games for family game night).

I graduated from college with a B.S in Technical Writing – so I’m a wordy know-it-all, as well as a minor in creative writing – so don’t always believe what I write. *wink*

I believe in Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Writing Well. (I also believe in our Constitution – Don’t Tread on my Rights, Yo).

I can be snark-a-licious, but only when provoked or when confronted with ignorant, ill-informed knuckleheads.